Steam...

My winter depression, like mist from the dawn fields, has lifted but I still feel disinclined and largely apathetic. This reflects most clearly in my posts, many of which I am embarrassed. I look at other blogs and many of them seem to have wealth inexhaustible of fecund, insightful articles and my own is reduced to nasty mockery and shrill polemic. Recently I have been constructing a sanctorale for use in my imaginary church. I was thinking of turning it into a novel, like Smoke in the Sanctuary, or something. But then I'd have to draw the church (I am good at drawing), plans of the church, orders of service, liturgical books, vestments, plate, fabric, invent major canons, honorary canons, vicars, archdeacons, mattins clerks, chaplains, choristers, ecclesia et synagoga, roods, curtains, banners, processional crosses (lots of those), heraldric devices, sacristans, porters, readers, acolytes, auxiliary churches (two...no three of these), a chapter house, cloister, bishop, king and queen, university doctors and the royal court, choir dress...oh, it's a never ending task. And am I even qualified? In the meantime, the steam has gone out of the blog.

I'd be very interested to know what readers think of the idea of an ideal imaginary church dedicated to liturgy. It would have a mediaeval cathedral model but it wouldn't be a real historic church. I'm still divided on chant, though, as I think that Gregorian chant (Solesmes fashion) is rather vulgar and unattractive in its syllable-by-syllable monody...